Song of the Week – Tell Me Your Plans and Empty Ever After, The Shirts

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IGNORED OBSCURED RESTORED

I believe in trusting my instincts and following the subtle signals we receive from the cosmos. I know, it sounds hokey but when unrelated events line up you have to wonder why and trust there is a reason.

Let me explain how I came to choose today’s SotW.

Blondie has been all over the media lately. They got a recent cover story in MOJO (May 2014) and took a rare musical spot on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (May 14th). This got me thinking about Blondie’s roots as an act at CBGB’s along with the other bands commonly associated with the club. Some had very successful careers (The Ramones, Talking Heads, Patti Smith) others a little less so (Television and Mink Deville) and yet others were merely a footnote – like The Shirts.

So I began to think that maybe a song by The Shirts would be a good SotW candidate, especially since their brand of power pop was closer to Blondie than the edgier rock of most of those other bands.

But here’s the kicker that caused me to pull the trigger. I just received an email from Netflix announcing that the 13 episode season two of Orange is the new Black is now available for viewing. Bingo, the light went on! Annie Golden, the lead singer for The Shirts, played the character of the “mute” Norma in season one. That locked it.

Today’s SotW is “Tell Me Your Plans” from their 1978 debut album.

“Tell Me Your Plans” was a surprise hit in Europe but received little notice here in the States.

For an example of the band’s harder rock sound, check out “Empty Ever After.”

The Shirts were based out of Brooklyn. Several of the Italian American bandmates were cousins – kind of a neighborhood band – and preferred that the band’s name be pronounced with a heavy Brooklyn accent — The “Shoits” (think John Travolta’s Tony Manero character in Saturday Night Fever).

The Shirts was produced by Mike Thorne who may have formed relationships with the CBGB acts when he was hired to work on Wire’s Live at CBGB Theatre, New York – July 18th 1978. It has his trademark sound that graces quite a few other great albums including Wire’s Pink Flag, ‘Til Tuesday’s Voices Carry, and Human Sexual Response’s In A Roman Mood.

After releasing a couple more albums The Shirts dissolved in 1981.

Enjoy… until next week.

Night Music: Chic, “Good Times”

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I don’t like prejudice, and so I don’t like knee-jerk evaluations of stuff. Oh, it isn’t your style? I would hope you listen instead and think instead of jerk your knees. Or shoot your mouth. Criticize, don’t bleat like some pop/punk princess.

I was working at the Food Coop today, enter Portlandia sound effect, and the squad leader put on a Pandora stream of early 80s pop disco. Reminders of lots of cheesy tunes, lots of dark nights, and also a reminder that at a time when Punk was ascendent, the Disco vision was also ascendant. The outcomes were totally different, but the motivations of the two were locked together, at least until AIDS erupted.

I and almost every other rocker I knew loved Good Times. It’s a great groove.

Breakfast Brew: Kathleen Hanna

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I’ve posted about Kathleen Hanna before. She was a leader of the Riot Grrl fanzine and band scene in the early 90s. There is a movie out about her, called The Punk Singer, which scored an 88 at Rotten Tomatoes.

In recent years she’s had a band called The Julie Ruin. Their album is a mixed bag, but this is a good one.

And let’s end with something of a Ted talk by Hanna at a show at Joe’s Pub in NY a few years ago. Good fun.

I hoped to end with a song by a band called Muttonchops, but such a thing does not seem to exist on You Tube.

New Night Music: The Menzingers, “I Don’t Want To Be An Asshole Anymore”

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I read a good review of this band’s “punky” new record last week and waded in. These guys are from Scranton PA, and the band’s name is the phonetic spelling of the German word for troubadour, which is kind of what gives here. You would hope that the sons of coal miners and refinery workers would be clawing (or digging) like mad to escape the brutal lives their parents lived as they struggled to get their little honeys into college and away from a life of Walmart and picking scabs off the inside of their various orifices. Kind of like Steve, who hails from around those parts, but no.

This kind of punk is really singer songwriter pop bleating catchy tunes above some well struck drums and jangly-hard guitars. I listened to a bunch of Menzinger’s songs and this one is the best I heard, but if you like it you might find something you like more in their catalog. If that’s the case, I’d suggest you try harder. There’s no reason to settle for competent fake punk.

By the way, I tried to be grumpy about the video but I couldn’t. Perfect.

Hmm, Menzingers, kind of like telling jokes about men. Kind of like that video. Brilliant.

LINK: What Is This?

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Screenshot 2014-06-05 15.53.58

Why it’s a classic album cover created using emoji!

A story at Fast Company explains how the novelist Wesley Stace, concurrently the singer-songwriter John Wesley Harding, has been creating these clever little icons of iconography and tweeting them out.

Didn’t guess the above album? Follow the link for the answer and more clever examples. Follow him @WesleyStace.

Parting album? Who’s Next.

Screenshot 2014-06-05 16.00.05

Night Music: Quasi, “Our Happiness Is Guaranteed”

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Lee Michaels thrived when his organ met with a drum.

Quasi’s Sam Coomes is looking for the same kick. He met the fabulous Janet Weiss. And found it?

LATER: Veruca Salt, “Seether” 2014

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Last week we did a little nostalgic walk back to the lovely-and-cleverly-named Veruca Salt, and their high profile song (was it a hit? in indy circles it was), Seether.

It was a pretty good pop rock meld, not too heavy, but clever enough for college kids to get.

Now, 18 years later, Veruca Salt is back.

They re-launched on Conan, and here’s their aged version of Seether.

Not terrible. Not awful. If I was their friend and they were playing in a bar that wasn’t too far from my house and I didn’t have other plans, I would go see them. And I would appreciate that they are smart enough to know that they can’t reproduce the magic. They’re engineering the magic, again.

And hoping to cash in. I expect the hoping part isn’t in play. Promoters know they can generate lots of dough off our idiotic romance with our past.

Or maybe it isn’t idiotic. Maybe that nostalgia is a serious part of our personalities. We all have the bug.

Song of the Week Revisited – Carnival of Life, Lee Michaels

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IGNORED OBSCURED RESTORED

Since we’re on a roll with Lee Michaels’ posts, I thought I’d resubmit a SotW I originally wrote in November 2012 for the email distribution list I had prior to joining this blog.

Does anyone remember Lee Michaels? If you do, it’s probably either from his very good third album Lee Michaels (recorded live in the studio accompanied only by his hefty drummer, Frosty) or his top 10 hit, “Do You Know What I Mean”, from “5th”.

But I fell in love with his 1968 debut Carnival of Life through an introduction I remember fondly. My 7th grade best friend, Mark P., had a much older brother that was attending Manhattan College in New York City. Albert had his own car with an 8-Track tape deck in it… and very good taste in music. He also liked to drive, and gas was cheap, so now and then he would take Mark and me on long rides to nowhere, just cruising and listening to tunes.

It’s where I first heard Zappa’s Freak Out, The Band’s Music From Big Pink, and The Who’s Tommy. Not bad. And though Carnival of Life isn’t nearly as “important” as those albums (nor has it aged as gracefully), it still holds a warm place in my musical memory. That aside, it is still a pretty rare record that commands a decent price in psych record collecting circles. (Check out the prices they want for the CD on Amazon!)

So let’s give a listen to the title track, “Carnival of Life.”

On this song Michaels plays his trademark Hammond organ and harpsichord. But I chose this cut because it also includes some pretty nifty guitar work by Hamilton W. Watt.

So where is Michaels now? If you really want to know, check out his wacko personal web site:

Lee Michaels Home Page

Enjoy… until next Saturday.

Lunch Break: The Real Kids, “Reggae Reggae”

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Not reggae. More rock from 1977, this time from New England.

Breakfast Blend: The Saints

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The punk band from Australia that I remember best are the Saints, whose album (I’m) Stranded is a fearsome noise. But watching videos of the band just now, their dominant theme seems now to be boredom. But maybe that’s singer Chris Bailey’s affect. This one, from their second album, is pretty hot.

By their third album they were onto something a little jazzy. Nice.

But it was (I’m) Stranded, out before there were Sex Pistols and the Clash, that won them attention for raw energy and speed. Classic.